English Chess Forum

Hi.
What are some good old books, pior to 1923, which are in public domain?


I suppose new books are either not copyright-free, or you cannot translate them freely

Copyright usually expires 70 years after the author's death, I think. So you'd be safe translating anything by an author who died earlier than 1947.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:Copyright usually expires 70 years after the author's death, I think. So you'd be safe translating anything by an author who died earlier than 1947.

What about some books that also translated or republished, like books of Lasker, Tarrash?

soheil_hooshdaran wrote:

IM Jack Rudd wrote:Copyright usually expires 70 years after the author's death, I think. So you'd be safe translating anything by an author who died earlier than 1947.

What about some books that also translated or republished, like books of Lasker, Tarrash?

The copyright would be in that translation ("the expression" as it's called in law) but not the original text, so you would be free to translate a Tarrasch book, for example, if you stick to his text but not anything added by a later editor/translator.

If you want something to translate into your own language, I would suggest Tarrasch's Dreihundert Schachpartien (3rd, post-WW1 edition if you can get it) or English version Three Hundred Chess Games, if it's not already been translated?
It would certainly benefit your chess to work through the book slowly!

Your problem might be that most old English-language books are in descriptive notation, whereas the original German is in algebraic.
You can of course get the game scores from a database but would need care when dealing with variations in the notes.

I found a site where this book seems to be available for download:

http://www.usenetreg.com/file.php?q=tar ... game%20pdf

I don't normally approve of bit-torrent sites but as the book is out of copyright it would be OK to get it from there, I guess.

Was 1923 a particularly good year?

Richard Bates wrote:Was 1923 a particularly good year?

in the states things published before 1923 are generally considered public domain

Joshua Gibbs wrote:

Richard Bates wrote:Was 1923 a particularly good year?

in the states things published before 1923 are generally considered public domain

What about the other nations?